Tom Cunliffe: Med mooring and Brigitte Bardot

How cosy Med moorings can get a little too cosy with a gale-force crosswind

One theme of this month’s Sailing Today is cruising in the Mediterranean. Over the years I’ve had many a joust with the Middle Sea and seen plenty of changes in ports, boats and people’s aspirations. The Med itself hasn’t altered at all. It’s still blue, it’s often ‘all-or-nothing’ for wind and it can get very hot in summer, but the harbours are transformed since I ran a sailing school off a beach west of Marseilles in the late 1960s. Shortly afterwards, a marina was built at Beaulieu on the French Riviera. Man-made havens have now proliferated, most of them requiring stern-to mooring techniques, but thankfully, many of the old ports are still open to yachts. They’ve been tidied up, of course, but some of the character remains to keep us on our toes.

Stern-to mooring has always been the default in Mediterranean harbours, as it is in most places with no appreciable range of tide, but haul-off lines, short-keeled, fin-and-spade boats and bow thrusters have revolutionised the process. Getting the yacht into that happy state where the mate can hop ashore for a quick stiffener before dinner is rarely a problem, given sound technique and a bit of luck.

It wasn’t always so easy. I’ll never forget bringing my boss’s yacht into Saint-Tropez so long ago that I had no moustache and my hair was still fair. The long-keeled craft was beautifully varnished, but, like most of her kind, she had a mind of her own going astern under power. The owner was keen to be in the thick of the action. As we stooged around sizing up the available berths we spotted a likely-looking slot bang in front of the fashionable Hotel Le Sube. Today, such a plum site would have been pre-booked by a minor royal from an unknown land or some wealthy cove with a fancy ship the size of an Isle of Wight ferry. Back then it was ‘first come, first served’.

No haul-off lines offered an easy grab for a mooring laid to hold the bow off the wall. The only way in was to manoeuvre the sharp end to a point opposite the bit of quay you fancied, let go the bower anchor and approach the wall stern-first, surging cable as you went. If the port was crowded, you’d also have to wedge yourself in between two yachts who’d got there first. By late afternoon there would be the bonus of a sea breeze whistling in, and the only sure thing was that it wouldn’t be blowing conveniently off the quay.

On this occasion, I laid the anchor more or less where I wanted it. The fenders were down for the big squeeze, one of the guests was aft with the stern lines and my crew was handling the windlass. He was surging cable out nicely until we were halfway in and a gust of wind took the bow away. Instead of letting the chain run, he snubbed the cable. It was too soon. There wasn’t enough scope to hold. The hook dragged and we fetched up athwart the hawse of a smart motor yacht. The crowd on the quay and the rougher element among the drinkers on Le Sube’s patio applauded my efforts. That was bad enough, but my humiliation was complete when I noticed the unmistakable profile of Brigitte Bardot, sipping champagne at a shady table and politely averting her gaze.

Later that year I was in Corsica with the same boat, this time on charter. By now I’d learned a thing or two about what could go wrong with berthing, but the Med still had a few tricks up her sleeve to add to my education. The harbour I’d chosen had a single row of stern-to berths on my port hand immediately inside the entrance. An offshore wind was blowing gently along the line so that I’d be beam-on to it as I made my astern approach run. The only space was at the leeward end. Up to weather lay a dozen or so assorted yachts and motorboats, mostly big.

Towering over the inland end of the tiny port rose a mountain with a cloud sitting on its peak. I looked at the cloud and I eyeballed the wind.

What would happen if it turned katabatic and blew like the clappers, I wondered? Laying more than the usual scope of chain seemed a likely measure against the possibility, so I dropped anchor well out, upwind of a dead square approach. This time, I got lucky. The breeze was on my port side blowing my bow to starboard. My prop was left-handed and kicked the stern to starboard too, so keeping her head-up as I came in astern was relatively easy. We dug in the anchor gently a length or so off the wall, then surged a few fathoms of chain to get the lines on. Once the stern was secure we cranked the hook up just enough to keep us in place and settled down to wait.

Next door was a privately run yacht with a well-behaved family aboard. As the sun dipped behind the mountain, they were quietly preparing dinner in the cockpit. Beyond them was a raft-up of monster motor yachts whose incumbents were already well into the party mode. White deck cushions were the order of the day, with bikini-clad girls chucking down evil-looking cocktails while their manly consorts made a determined raid on the rum rations.

The music was cranked up and the dancing had just begun when the weather took a turn for the worse. The hot air rising off the stonework was prodigious and it wasn’t quite dark when the cold wind from the mountain top came ripping down to take its place. It blasted across the defenceless fun-seekers like a squadron of avenging valkyries. My boat began to swing to leeward rapidly, so I nipped up forward and hardened up the chain, glad I had stolen a march by laying the hook upwind. The yacht came back into position and although my sunhat had blown away at high velocity, all was well for a few stress-free seconds.

The first I knew that things were turning to the bad was when I was smacked across the face by an airborne deck cushion. All sorts of debris followed it across ourforedeck: cushions, towels, a blow-up crocodile and enough clothing to furnish an Oxfam shop for a busy weekend flew by horizontally. Meanwhile, up to windward, the motorboats were on the move. Amid general screaming and shouting, three of them dragged their anchors. Considering the combined windage of those monumental topsides it was small wonder. For a few seconds our neighbour’s anchor hung on, but it stood no chance against the onslaught. In the time it took me to run aft and start grabbing extra fenders, the whole shambles was onto us. Miraculously, our hook held, but the fenders were as flat as a Michelin X losing an argument with a six-inch nail. I thought about easing the cable, but I’d left the windlass pawl on. The only way of releasing it was to heave in an inch of chain then flip it off. I looked at the bar-taut cable. Fat chance of that. All we could do was sit tight and hope. We didn’t have to hope for long, because the pick soon gave up the struggle of holding five boats in a gale-force crosswind and we too began to drag. The sideways feeling didn’t last either, because I’d only just managed to fender the starboard side before we crunched into the knuckle of the dock with three huge motor boats and a yacht pressing us on and our deck beams groaning.

The whole event lasted under five minutes. Air pressure must have equalised when the last of the light died away, because the wind wound down as quickly as it had risen.We sustained some damage, but it could have been worse. The motorboats limped away into the gloom and the gentleman on the next yacht invited me to take a glass of wine with him. I accepted with gratitude, but as I crossed my cockpit I almost tripped over a leopardskin bikini top wrapped around my binnacle. From somewhere in the darkness a giggle floated on the dying breeze.

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